Gender shock: why young women aren’t happy in 2024

It’s supposed to be a new world of empowerment for young women. How they are really feeling about life, sex and careers in 2024 may shock you.

Young Women’s Alliance chief executive Rizina Yadav on Tuesday. Picture: David Beach

Young women in Australia have worse mental health and are generally less happy with who they are than young men, new research finds.

They also feel silenced while at school, treated less seriously than males in the workplace and in healthcare settings, and more held back in their careers due to their gender, the study reports.

Young women feel less able to influence society. Social pressure to be constantly nice also weighs more heavily on them.

And perhaps most shockingly, 90 per cent of the 18 to 28 year-old women interviewed in the study said they perceived sexual assault as “inevitable”.

The landmark study from the Young Women’s Alliance takes a deep dive into the lives of young Australian women through a survey of 3000 18 to 28-year-olds and in-depth interviews with another 300 across life areas including education, careers, health, self-­esteem, financial independence and gender-based violence.

Broadly, it finds women in Australia aged 18 to 28 see themselves as significantly disadvantaged by their gender, with those in rural and regional areas particularly affected.

YWA chief executive Rizina Yadav said despite more attention being paid to younger women and the pressures they face in recent years, the 2024 data shows continuing gaps compared to young men on a range of issues.

Asked why young women were simply not as happy as young men, Ms Yadav told The Australian social media was a significant contributor.

“Young people are spending three to four hours on social media a day, and what young women are seeing is a narrative of aesthetic perfection while for young men it’s a more diverse message around being successful and doing well,” she said.

“We’ve given young women a sense that you can have everything but also that if you don’t achieve it you’re not good or ­valued.”

Ms Yadav said when it came to mental health, young men and young women had different stressors.

“We know mental health distress is significantly higher among young women compared to young men, and 25 per cent of the women reporting mental health distress said it was related to gender-based issues like assault, gender discrimination and violence,” Ms Yadav said.

The study also shows 90 per cent of young women said they considered sexual assault “inevitable”. “Since 2021, we’ve had young women like Chanel Contos and others lead a movement and there seems to have been a tide of cultural change, so to see that statistic in 2024 is shocking,” Ms Yadav said.

The study, which also includes a series of disturbing real-life experiences of the young women surveyed, will be presented to federal Minister for Women Katy Gallagher on Wednesday.

Ms Yadav is urging governments to take action, including funding a one-stop shop for young women to provide advice on harm prevention whether it be from sexual, emotional, financial or physical abuse. The online ­service could also help with educational and career guidance.

The study finds a number of striking comparisons.

Asked on a scale of one to 10 whether they feel they can influence society, young men averaged over five while for young women it was only three.

On whether they felt pressure to be nice all the time, young women were just shy of eight, while for young men it was less than six.

Young men were far more likely to say they found casual sex empowering, and sex in general being about power. And young women were almost twice as likely to report having been sexually harassed in the workplace.

The study finds that healthcare professionals are perceived to take men’s issues or pain more seriously than women’s.

And men feel more confident in their financial literacy and ­decision-making than women, even though women place a ­higher importance on financial independence than men.

There is a significant city-­regions divide in women’s perceptions as well, the study notes. For example, 44 per cent of women in remote or regional areas lack financial literary confidence compared to 33 per cent of women in cities.

Australian National University gender researcher Sally Moyle said “the policy decisions we make today will determine outcomes for young people over coming decades”.

“If we are to address the looming crises of climate change, inequality, and geopolitical challenges, we need to listen to young people now, and action the recommendations they make. This research is a great resource for policy makers,” Professor Moyle said.